Republicans and Latinos

Immigration reform is not enough

IF NOVEMBER'S presidential election, in which some exit polls had Mitt Romney winning just 27% of the Latino vote, was a wake-up call to Republicans, the sleep must have been deep indeed. For months it had been clear to anyone with half an eye on the polls that the Republicans were tanking among Latinos. In August, Mr Romney emerged 39 percentage points behind Barack Obama in the first of 11 weekly tracking polls carried out by Latino Decisions. (Those, of course, turned out to be the good days.) Whether or not Mr Romney's fondness for "self-deportation" was to blame, the Republican pre-election spin that a focus on jobs and growth would be enough to win around Latino voters is not only risible in retrospect, it was obviously wrong at the time.

OK, election campaigns do funny things to people's brains. At least the Republicans are on board now. After all, as Reagan is once supposed to have said, Latinos are natural Republicans. They just don't know it yet. Ditch the crazy rhetoric, silence the wingnuts and take at least partial ownership of immigration reform, and the shared values of Republicans and Latinos—aspiration, pro-enterprise, social conservatism—should emerge clearly enough to help satisfy Reagan's formula. (If it's good enough for Susana Martinez...)

This is certainly how John McCain is selling the proposals put forward by his "Gang of eight" senators. His home state of Arizona, where the Latino population grew by almost half between 2000 and 2010, is one that many Democratic strategists see as ripe for competition in 2016. (The state has backed the Republican candidate in every presidential election bar one since 1948.) Elsewhere in the mountain west Latino votes have already helped shift the 20 electoral-college votes of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, all of them once reliably red states, into the Democratic column in the last two elections. Mr McCain acknowledges the danger. But because of "small business, less regulation, big service in the military, pro-life, all these reasons," he argues, Republicans should be able to attract enough Latino support to keep the demographic tide at bay.

Mr McCain's commitment to sorting out America's broken immigration system is not in doubt. And the Republican tin-ear to immigration concerns certainly helps explain Mr Romney's dismal performance among Latinos. But it's worth unpacking Mr McCain's claim. Perhaps the most common element of the "natural Republican" argument for Latinos is the cultural-conservative one. It doesn't stack up well. Support for same-sex marriage is now stronger among Latinos than other ethnic groups. If support for second-amendment rights counts as a conservative value, there is scant consolation for Republicans: last year just 29% of Latino voters told a Pew poll that gun "rights" were more important than gun "control". Mr McCain is right about abortion, an issue on which Latinos are marginally more conservative than blacks or whites. But it's not a priority for many voters. And as with other Americans, younger Latinos are considerably more liberal on all these issues than their older counterparts.

What about Mr McCain's "less regulation"? Well, leaving aside the Dodd-Frank Act, which happens not to make an appearance among the top priorities of any voters, Latino or otherwise, one of the heftiest pieces of regulation produced in the first Obama term was the Affordable Care Act. And, as Mr Romney turned out to be aware, it's a hit with Latinos. OK, so what about all that business-stifling red tape the Democrats are so fond of? Well, there sure are a lot of Latino small-business owners. Some should be receptive to a Republican message that emphasises entrepreneurial vim and freedom. But we haven't heard much of that from the GOP lately. (Marco Rubio's convention speech in Tampa was an honourable exception.)

This is partly because the party's energies have been dedicated to keeping a lid on spending and shrinking the size of government. And while these may be worthy goals, they do not appear to fly with many Latinos. Immediately before November's election just 12% said spending cuts were the best way to reduce America's fiscal deficit. Neither is trimming the deficit is a priority. Indeed, many Latino voters appear to be moving in the opposite direction from today's Republicans: in 2011 Gary Segura of Latino Decisions reported that 82% of Latinos wanted a more active government, next to 59% of non-Hispanic whites.

Education may present an opportunity for Republicans. Latinos are among the worst victims of the terrible public schools in many parts of the United States, and the lock that teachers' unions often have over state Democratic parties leaves an opening for the GOP. The Republicans will also be helped by a saner message on immigration, voter-friendly Latino faces like Mr Rubio's and, if they can craft it, a 21st-century version of the American dream. But against these potential bright spots are the demographic trends: the Latino share of the electorate grew from 9.7% in 2008 to 12.5% last year and will continue to rise quickly. Most of these new voters will surely continue to back Democratic candidates, even if the Republicans can eat away at the gap.

The premises in your argument are false: mexicans immigrants do not demand anybody being taxed for their benefit nor do they insist that anyone pay to celebrate their culture. As for undercutting wages that's what your 'natives' are willing to pay them (and get away with) for the menial and hard jobs only they do for none of your natives will be caught dead doing any of those jobs. I guess the xenophobic natives in your argument feel the same way America's truly natives felt with the arrival of the pilgrims in New England.

I hate being wrong, but you make an excellent point. These people, yours and mine, had to have backbone and a lot of it. They built what many consider to be the greatest nation ever, but it breaks my heart to see what we are doing to it.

Marie83 - you're just wrong. There is free movement of labour enshrined at the very core of the EU so anyone, irrespective of their skills, is free to move from one EU member state to another and gain employment there. It is not a skills-based model of immigration at all. Moreover, unions also have no say in the matter.

First off La Capital means from "Mexico Distrito Federal" or more commonly known as Mexico city where there are no farms, the Mexicans that's work the fields here in the states are from the rural areas of Mexico like Oaxaca where they too have fields and so the experience lands them the jobs of picking the stuff. I dont see where i was generalizing on my last post so if you liked to point it out im all ears okay?, with me so far? I'm not sure what made you laugh about my comment I'm Latino and so is my whole entire family and i am telling you crossing the border weather it is Fake papers or river crossing and dessert walking or even the California coast is NOT happening at the rate you people think it is anymore. Why is that funny to say? what made you and your Latino friendly Amigos laugh? You mention a lot of legal migration and movements but none of that is relevant to what i said so i tuned it out. The issue about immigration is the Illegal immigration side of it, understand? nobody wants to legalize people already here because they think more people are always coming illegally and so it creates a endless loop. But people aren't coming illegally as much anymore because its harder and so time to think about whats gonna happen with the ones here now. And that was my point... get it?

You just made the most blatant assumptions then claimed a direct link. You couldn't have illustrated my point better if you were intentionally parodying it.
."the majority of Republicans are southerners"
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Wrong. Most Republicans live in blue states. California has the most Republicans. Los Angeles has more Republicans than Mississippi.
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Now let's look at the data. Explicit racism splits fairly evenly between Democrats and Republicans.http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/racism-by-polit...
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What we have here is a case of perceived polarization. There's a study on it that's floating around the blogosphere today. In general, people believe parties to be more extremist than they actually are.

"The point is to craft a national consensus from the top to the bottom of both parties of what sets of rules will be conductive to a better America down the road, and which ones will throw the nation into the black pit so many societies have experienced before in the long centuries and millennia of History."
And you can't do that by pandering, as will Marco Rubio tomorrow in his rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address. He is supposed to speak in Spanish too. No, no, and NO! That will only encourage the disgruntled to continually view Spanish-speakers as separate. Knowing many languages is wonderful, but English is our bridge, we are not a polyglot nation as is The Netherlands. Look at what has happened to Quebec, it's isolated itself from the rest of English-speaking Canada. Spanish speakers ought to learn and use English. Retain knowledge of Spanish, of course! But knowing and using English is paramount to assimilation, imo. This used to be common sense.
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"More likely these children will grow up and be in gangs, if legalized they will get food stamps and welfare."
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That's funny. In my town, many of the children of immigrants went to college, and now help run the local banks.
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So, how do you spell racism where you live? :)

"I don't want to pay any money to send the children of illegal aliens to our public schools."
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They'll be paying for your social security and medicare, if they aren't already.
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You don't get somethin' for nothin'. :)

Then ask yourself why Asian Americans, who tend to be more financially successful, less dependent on social welfare, and often more socially conservative, voted for the Democrats 3-1. Being one myself, I’d say there are several reasons, all of which could apply to Hispanic voters too:
- The GOP’s rhetoric often sounds exclusionary (“the real America” and all that).
- Its history of being more supportive of discriminatory policies is worrying even to those who weren’t targeted by them.
- Many immigrants don’t share the belief that more government is inherently bad.
- Many immigrants hold higher education in very high esteem, and the GOP appears not to.

GOP policy in a friendlier wrapper might actually work. It might not, but I certainly think the way it was presented didn’t help.

Since Latin America isn't exactly a right-wing paradise, I've always been a bit suspicious of the argument that Latinos are naturally Conservative. Perhaps immigrants are different from those that stay at home, but it seems to be more wishful thinking than careful analysis. Their stance on abortion and emphasis on family values are really the main two things that point in a Conservative direction, most everything else doesn't fit well.

An undercurrent of racism appears to drive part of the GOP's reluctance toward immigration reform, per this comment by Rep. Barletta of Pennsylvania -
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“The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”
.http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/01/29/1509411/gop-rep-says-he-opp...
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In other words, according to Barletta, illegal immigrants (mostly Hispanics, btw) are dumb and lazy.
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Barletta has apparently never spent a year harvesting lettuce.

It's going to be a long time before Latinos trust the GOP. The Republican pols got good and scared by what happened in the 2012 election. But what's the party going to do about all those racists in its base?

As a bit of revealing humor, remember that McCain put out an ad showing him walking along the border fence with the sheriff of Pinal County - which is not on the border but is between Phoenix and Tucson. McCain talks about the need for border security and refers carefully to violence. Carefully because he didn't want to say violence in the US, which is down, but rather was appealing to fear of violence that exists in Mexico. The humor: as McCain ran away from his immigration record to keep his job, he befriended a sheriff who turned out to be a closeted gay man with a Mexican lover who, it has been alleged, he threatened to deport. Speaks volumes about the GOP and immigration. Marco Rubio, of course, wouldn't be running for office because his grandfather was ordered deported as illegal in the 1960's, but now he speaks about border security.

"...instead of paying to send their children to our public schools."
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Per a recent post in TE, the US is going to need the labor of those kids in "our" public schools in order to grow the economy.
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Given that we're paying to educate them, it makes fiscal and economic sense to keep them here, and allow them to work.

The Republicans would be doing well if immigration were there only problem. Something about rape and women's bodies able to shut down those functions may be worth considering. I would strongly recommend Jr. High biology be among the subjects Republican's study ahead of 2014 and certainly well ahead of 2016. It is amazing the national party supports people with such weird beliefs. They certainly cannot be taken seriously.

To think a group that is at best at Jr. High Biology level would be ready for national politics in just a couple years is a stretch at best. The Republican's best hope is probably well beyond 2016 if Hilary considers a presidential run.